Pervez Musharraf

Pervez Musharraf (11 August 1943-) was the Chief Executive of Pakistan from 12 October 1999 to 21 November 2002 (succeeding Nawaz Sharif and preceding Zafarullah Khan Jamali) and President from 20 June 2001 to 18 August 2008 (succeeding Muhammad Rafiq Tarar and preceding Muhammad Mian Soomro). Musharraf was a prominent Pakistan Army general, leading the military during the 1999 Kargil War with India; that same year, he seized power from Nawaz Sharif in a coup d'etat, and he was Chief Executive from 1999 to 2002 and President from 2001 to 2008. The assassination of political opponent Benazir Bhutto triggered his downfall in 2008, and he went into exile.

Biography
Pervez Musharraf was born in Delhi, British Raj on 11 August 1943 to an Urdu-speaking Muslim family of sayyid nobility. He was raised in Karachi and Istanbul, and he studied math at the Forman Christian College in Lahore before entering the Pakistan Military Academy in 1961, and he was commissioned as an officer in the Pakistan Army in 1964. Musharraf fought in the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965 as a second lieutenant, and he commanded an artillery brigade during the Soviet-Afghan War. During the 1990s, as a Major-General, Musharraf commanded an infantry division, playing an active role in the Afghan Civil War. In October 1998, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif appointed Musharraf as the head of the Pakistani armed forces. In 1999, Musharraf led an infiltration of Kashmir that led to the Kargil conflict, which almost escalated into an all-out war between Pakistan and India. After Prime Minister Sharif attempted to remove Musharraf from the army's leadership, Musharraf staged a military coup in 1999 and put Sharif under house arrest as he began moving towards a trial. He headed the military government until 2002; from 2001 to 2008, he was the President of Pakistan. In 2002, the army-backed PML(Q) party won the election, and Musharraf emerged as the PML(Q) leader. Musharraf synthesized conservative and liberal views, overseeing a process of social liberalism while also pursuing policies of economic liberalism and banning trade unions. The GDP rose under Musharraf's rule, but domestic savings declined and income inequality grew. More importantly, he was accused of human rights abuses. Musharraf survived several assassination attempts, mostly caused by his crackdown on the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan and other Islamist insurgent groups in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas. After the suspension of the judicature, the end of Shaukat Aziz's premiership, and the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, Musharraf lost his public support, and he resigned in 2008 rather than be impeached. He went into self-imposed exile in London, England, but he returned home in 2013 for the general elections. He was disqualified from taking part in the elections in April 2013 and was booked and charged with high treason for implementing emergency rule and suspending the constitution.